CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

March 17, 2008

Product News

Proficiency Releases Collaboration Gateway™ Version 7.0—New Completion Wizard™ for CATIA V4 to CATIA V5 Migrations and Conversions

Proficiency, the leading developer of solutions that enable manufacturers and their suppliers to extract and share product knowledge from diverse engineering and manufacturing environments today introduced version 7.0 of its Collaboration Gateway™, a state-of-the-art CAD interoperability solution for the intelligent translation of data between all major CAD systems. The new version includes improved performance and reporting capabilities, 64 bit memory support, higher exchange rates based on new functionality, user enhancements for project management and new CATIA V4 to CATIA V5 functionality. Also being released is a brand new Completion Wizard™ product that interactively allows the engineer to complete and validate the final model.

The Collaboration Gateway enables the transfer of the complete product knowledge between major CAD systems which includes geometry, features, sketches, manufacturing info, metadata, assembly information and drawings in the conversion process. Simply stated it means that high quality CAD models are transferred without loosing their workability or manufacturing data. Moreover, the process does not only preserve the product knowledge, but more importantly adds value by removing old issues embedded in the original model.

The new product release is available immediately worldwide and current customers can easily upgrade to Collaboration Gateway version 7.0.

Proficiency's Collaboration Gateway is used by leading organizations in automotive, aerospace/defense and heavy machinery to migrate to a new CAD system or to significantly reduce the cost and time of product design and delivery with partners. By automating a majority of the exchange of the product knowledge and providing an interactive process and methodology to complete the model, a reliable and accurate exchange between product development teams regardless of the CAD system being used is achieved.

"Proficiency's solutions offer manufacturers a complete solution for conversions when delivering to an OEM/partner in their required CAD format or migrations to a new CAD system. Alternative approaches of manual re-mastering have proven to be inefficient, costly and risky as our growing customer base demonstrates," said Alex Shapira, President and CEO, Proficiency. "The new capabilities in this most recent release and our new Completion Wizard product have been proven in production with leading customers to effectively handle the most complex real-life challenges encountered by their engineering teams," added Shapira.

With up to 95% of the translation handled by the Gateway the powerful complementary Completion Wizard has been developed to complete the process. It operates as a plug-in within CATIA V5, and tracks and validates any manual changes that a user makes involving portions of the model that could not be automatically exchanged with CG 7.0 due to CAD incompatibility differences. From within CATIA V5, the user is presented with detailed information about pending issues, and presented options as how to successfully complete the model.

"We at Daimler Powertrain are very pleased with Proficiency's CG V7.0 release and the new innovative Completion Wizard. As our CAD interoperability solution (CATIA V4 to V5) we have experienced major improvements in completion time of medium and complex models by as much as 50%", said Dr. Haasis, Senior Manager CoC CAD/CAM & VR. "With greater ease of use, increased quality, and robust control of the process as well as noticeable cost savings, we have a repeatable method of achieving product knowledge migration."

Highlights of the new release include:

  • Exchange Rate Success Improvements
  • Added was the ability to exchange elements like PIPE, GPR, and SKD both in part and assembly mode.
  • Support for 64 bit Memory
  • Proficiency now supports 64 bit memory architectures used for models of very high complexity.
  • Project Management Controls
  • Also in CG V7 is a new setting to define and re-use project specific data requirements as well as allowing companies to ensure compliance with multiple exchange requirements. Efficiency is also improved by inspecting for and re-using parts within and across projects.
  • Enhanced Associative Drawing Support for CATIA V4 to V5
  • Added was the support for associative and non-associative views, the exchange of associative Dimensions, and support for Dittos/Symbols elements, colors and layers.
  • Superior Functionality and Scope for Batch Submission
  • With large scale jobs the way to submit a job has been improved to include manual or scripted submission and easy integration to OpenDXM, DDX, DEXcenter,..Etc.

Additional enhancements include:

  • Sketch Report Improvements for Pro/E
  • Support for CATIA V5 R17 and NX5
  • Support for Details/Dittos/Macro-primitives for V4 to NX5
  • ACF Support for V5, NX to Pro/E
  • Support NX4 multi-body features
  • Threads for V5, UG, and Pro/E

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